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Lissette was born March 10, 1947, in Lima, Peru, at a time when her parents, Cuban TV stars Olga Chorens and Tony Álvarez (Olga y Tony),[3] were touring South America. While living with her parents in Havana, Cuba, Lissette made her first recording at age 5, the children's song "El Ratoncito Miguel", which would eventually become a hit for her.

She and her sister were sent to live in the United States when she was 14 years old (on 13 September 1961[4]) through Operation Peter Pan, a US government sponsored program in conjunction with the Catholic Welfare Bureau, and which transported 14,000 Cuban children from Cuba to the United States. The scheme was devised for families opposed to the Cuban revolution of 1959, who feared that the government would indoctrinate their children into communism.

After two years in the US, Lissette and her sister were reunited with their parents in Miami and the whole family moved to Puerto Rico in 1965 where she lived until 1979 and where she worked as a singer.[5]